At this year’s Revelry conference, we held a number of workshops designed to provide business owners and operators the tools and insights they need to be competitive in the marketplace. In one of those sessions, we focused on the importance of a growing a digital presence, regardless of the size of your business.
Many small business owners have been slow to adapt to the shifting landscape, but doing so for much longer may prove to have dire consequences. It’s not merely for the shifting retail landscape, although that certainly has it’s own impact to consider. We’ve pulled some statistics on how consumers are interacting with the technology, which ultimately has implications on how and where you should meet your customer regardless of whether you’re a retailer or restaurateur.
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As of the beginning of 2016, 87% of Americans were active internet users, a 4% increase from the year before. If you’ve ever heard the term peak oil, meaning the point at which oil production its maximum, we might just be reaching peak internet within the US. Unless newborns find their way to active internet use, it’s pretty safe to say, that we’re reaching a point where internet use is fairly ubiquitous in the US.
But Americans aren’t just online. They’re rapidly adopting mobile internet use and social media has made its way into nearly every age group. Nearly 59% of Americans are now active social media users, up 3% from the year before. Active is a little vague, but is typically defined as logging in at least once a month. The fastest gain though was the adoption of mobile social media with 52% of Americans being active—a 6% increase over the year previous. Perhaps the reason is that there are now 170 million smartphone owners (18 and over) in the US, which equals about… 52% of the American population.
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The conclusion that we can draw is that with proliferation of smartphones, internet and social media use has increased to match. As a result, e-commerce is booming. According to a recent survey, in a single month, 71% of Americans said they searched for a product or service online, 66% visited an online retail store, and 66% purchased a product or service online.
What does this all mean? 93% of those that searched for a product online made some sort of purchase. Your customers are already online looking for a reason to make a purchase, so if you’re not putting yourself in front of them there, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to develop potential revenue streams. If you're interested in boosting your overall revenues, check out how Revel's e-commerce features can help.
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